


Join the FUN

by ultimatequesadilla



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 03:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6836407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultimatequesadilla/pseuds/ultimatequesadilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frisk finally expells Chara from their mind after genocide after genocide, but they're still mistrusted by all, and their determination gets them sent to the True Lab for study and detainment until the Underground can truly be sure that their murderous rampage is done for good.<br/>But as they encounter abominations untold, another threat emerges. One that stretches not only through the underground but through reality itself--all realities, all timelines, linked as they are. They must escape the True Lab and bend the fabric of spacetime itself, to right what has been wronged and wash the dust from their hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Join the FUN

Chara hung like a deadweight from Frisk's mind. They clung and dragged them back, though Waterfall was so close and Frisk knew that just...one...more...step would carry them away from this path upon which they'd trod so many times before.  
_Where are you going?_  
_Away,_ Frisk replied to Chara's stinging thought.  
_There're still things to do,_ Chara tittered, and their voice was tinged with mischief like that of a child's.  
They are a child, we are both children, Frisk reminded themself. And yet they weren't, despite their child's body--they had both seen too much, lived too long, had too much dust on their hands to be children.  
Frisk's limbs were tugged as a puppet's strings, through the powdered snow. Their feet were damp and cold, and yet it was their heart that felt like ice, for they knew what was coming and they could do nothing to stop it. 

 _That comedian..._ Chara thought. _Alas, it's done now, don't you think? Time to go to Waterfall, like you'd wanted._  
Frisk brushed dust off their hands; it joined other grey scuffs on the empty cloaks that lay draped across fallen axes. Echoes of pained yelps still burned in Frisk's ears, no matter how many times they'd heard them.  
The puppet's strings dragged along again, and Frisk did not resist them. They'd thought the pain would lessen...but even after reset upon reset upon reset, the memories of the first time were still as vivid as yesterday. The first time, when Chara was only a name and the Underground was filled with laughter and music instead of this terrible awful silence.  
_I rather like it,_ Chara thought. _The silence. Leaves more space to think, don't you agree?_  
Frisk nodded numbly. They were reaching the edge of town; now the narrow Waterfall path stood before them once again, with nothing but the howling wind to send them on their way.  
_Do you remember your pacifist days?_ Chara sniggered. _I watched you, once. You were a sap._  
Frisk ignored them, and still was dragged on strings as the world was enveloped in a thick fog.  
For a moment, they felt like they were floating. And they wished they could float away, far away from there.  
"HUMAN!" came a shout.

Dust. Grey dust falling across a crimson scarf like a bloodstain on the ground. Frisk knelt and took the fabric in their hands, held it and felt a single tear brim in one of their eyes, only to be blinked away by Chara.  
_Oh he was a bore, anyway,_ Chara sneered. _We should go, besides. There's a real challenge up ahead and I'd not like to miss it. Would you?_  
"Yes," Frisk said aloud, softly, their voice joining the wind.  
_Too bad._  
And Frisk was dragged toward Waterfall, and the snow was turned to mud and the flowers echoed back distant screams.  
There was a patch of silent flowers that must have just bloomed, waiting for something to speak into them, to fill their silence. Frisk bit back a choked sob as their legs moved without them willing them to.  
"I want to go home," they said, biting their lip until it bled. The flowers whispered back. "I want to go home." Frisk spoke louder now, their voice hoarse from crying and disuse. "I want to go home, I want to go home..."  
They kept walking. The flowers grew further and further away with every step.  
_You have no home,_ Chara chided. Do you remember? _They hurt you. Your family. They yelled and they hit you, they never truly loved you. I've seen it, I've seen those memories, so you cannot lie to me now. No one has ever truly loved you._  
Frisk remembered the first journey. And the second. Both pacifist, both longing for the family they had never known...  
_Not even the monsters. Do you see? Even the monsters were so lost in their own selfish ambitions that you were like dirty chaff to them..._  
_No, they weren't. I'm not._  
_Yes, you are._  
_No._  
_Did any of them do anything for you? Or were they too busy working with their own demons to--_  
"Shut UP."  
The flowers echoed. Chara seemed surprised, and Frisk stopped walking. They clenched their fists. Only now did they notice that they still had the scarf, wrapped haphazardly around their shoulders. The dust smelled like burning.  
Chara spoke of demons as if they had none. As if they hadn't killed everyone they had once held dear, time and time again.  
Or rather, watched Frisk kill them.  
Time and time again.  
Over.  
And.  
Over.  
"SHUT UP!" Frisk screamed again. Something rattled in their mind like shattering glass. They put their hands to their temples, which now ached a deep pulsing ache.  
Why should I!? Chara shrieked with a sudden vehemence. Frisk shrank back instinctively, arms above them in a defense against nothing.  
_We've done this before, Frisk! We've been through this--I'm the boss! Me, alright!_  
Frisk was reminded again of their youth.  
_How old were you?_ Frisk thought, lowering their arms and clutching the scarf in tiny balled fists. _When you died? How old?_  
Chara was quiet for a long, long moment.  
_...Nine. I was nine. And..._  
_Asriel told me that you hated humanity._  
A longer pause, hanging in the air as if from a noose.  
_...They hated me. All of them. Humans and monsters alike hated me. I was...I..._  
_Scared?_  
Chara instantly erupted in anger.  
_No. No, I wasn't scared, if I were scared could I do this?_  
Frisk's arm shot through the air and connected with their own cheek. It stung, and they could feel a forming bruise.  
_Or this? Or this?_  
Another punch. This time in the stomach. Frisk's fingernails dragged down their own arm. Crimson drops appeared.  
It was odd, Frisk thought, to bleed, when monsters' attacks only harmed the soul. But Chara was no monster, as much as they seemed--they were human. And they were, scared, just as Frisk was.  
Frisk sat.  
_They hurt you too, didn't they? Your first parents?_  
Silence.  
_...They broke me._  
Frisk nodded.  
_But the Dreemurrs were kind. Weren't they?_  
_...Yes._  
_Do you think they loved you?_  
_...._  
_...._  
Frisk stood, and this time it was of their own volition. They weren't sure why they did, but they turned around and took a slow pace back toward the new echo flowers. Chara hung in the background, thinking, and this time it was Frisk looking into Chara's memories like an open window.

The sharp pain of falling.  
Asriel's eyes, the first thing they had seen, green in the tiny patch of sun.  
Yellow flowers.  
Toriel's beaming face, Asgore's kindly laugh and instant agreement that yes, they could be Chara's new family.  
Buttercups, so so yellow against the palace's gray.  
More pain, dull, pervasive and draining and dying...  
Darkness. Beating hearts shattering reality, and then a sense of power, of humans cowering like ants beneath them. For the first time, they were in command of their own destiny, they could get back at them for everything...  
_He stopped me,_ Chara thought quietly, a whisper. _He was too kind to see them die. He would never...harm anyone..._  
And tears began to roll across Frisk's cheeks, wet trails in a thin coat of dust. They made no motion to wipe them--they simply let Chara cry.  
_He would never harm me._  
_So he loved you, then._  
_...Yes. And I killed him._  
Frisk came upon the patch of flowers and sat among them, careful not to crush any petals.  
_I killed him, Frisk._  
Frisk made no reply.  
_I'm...I don't...To see him like that, what he's become, it's me...it's all me..._  
The tears continued to flow, and now Frisk found themself sobbing. Loud, wretching, coughing, as if they hadn't cried in all their life.  
The flowers played their cries back at them, and they could aolmost imagine that Chara was there, and that they could pull them close and hug away their sadness...  
Frisk wrapped their arms around themself. Chara's cries quieted.  
_I think I'll sleep now,_ said Chara. _...Can you wake me up? When you see him again?_  
_I'll wake you up._  
Chara faded back to the deep recesses of Frisk's thoughts. They were still there, but they did nothing-and in moments, it felt like they were nothing at all. Frisk's mind was their own.  
And the weight of their deeds set in.

Footsteps, echoed by the flowers.  
Breath a fog in the air still laden with Snowdin's residual cold.  
A snap of fingers.  
"You."  
Sans' anger didn't surprise Frisk, but it made them no less afraid. Without Chara to protect them, the first Gaster Blaster would disintegrate their soul in an instant.  
They found themself crying again, silently, and they took off the scarf and held it out, careful not to let its edges touch the mud. They shut their eyes and waited, for the searing burning of the Blasters, but they never came.  
Sans took the scarf. He draped it around his own neck, tucked it into his hoodie.  
"So they're gone, eh?" Sans said. Frisk tilted their head to the side. "You know...them. You. You kicked them out, right?"  
Frisk blinked. How did he--  
"Kid, look, I know more about the timelines than you think, and I know that it wasn't you. So tell me again, did you kick them out?"  
Each word was separated, emphasized, a threat. Frisk nodded frantically, wiping tears and mud from their face. Sans wouldn't believe them, but it didn't hurt to try.  
"My pet rock needs feeding, you know," Sans remarked. "Papyrus isn't there anymore, so..."  
Frisk's tears began anew. Sans didn't stop talking. "So there's no one left for it. I guess I'll have to take up the mantle. Just like all the other times--but different, y'know? This time I'm not blowing your ass to smithereens." His voice sharpened, like a knife.  
Frisk was surprised at the language, and Sans laughed at their reaction without a trace of amusement.  
"Kid, we both know you're not a kid and we both know I'm an absolute edgelord."  
Frisk shrugged.  
Sans' perpetual smile grew closer to not being a smile, somehow seeming a frown though the corners of his...teeth? were still turned up.  
"We also both know I can't trust you."  
Frisk nodded.  
"I could kill you right now," Sans continued almost contemplatively, in that same relaxed monotone, a facade over anger that Frisk had seen unleashed in white-hot flames and poisoned bones and hollow eyes against fang-toothed mouths, floating spectres watching them burn. "But there's someone who'll want to see you first. Can't deny her this level of determination."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Out of character? Yeah, maybe. Eh.
> 
> I did accidentally quote Wand of Gamelon. "Oh, he was a bore, anyway..."


End file.
